I’m excited to have collaborated with Kim Wilkens to present Foiling Fake News wth Fourth Graders at the Library 2.017 Worldwide Virtual Conference. The theme for the conference was Digital Literacy and Fake News, so our three-week unit with St. Anne’s-Belfield School fourth graders busting fake news online was be a perfect fit. We spoke with educators and librarians all over the world about what inspired us to create the unit, talked through our planning and implementing of the lessons, and shared what we learned along the way (including our mistakes!). We also shared links to our online teaching kit which includes all of the procedures and resources that we used.

Here is some more information about the Digital Literacy conference, from www.library20.com:

The second of three Library 2.017 mini-conferences: “Digital Literacy and Fake News,” has been announced and will be held online (and for free) June 1st, from 12:00 – 3:00 pm US-Pacific Daylight Time.

This event is being organized in partnership with futurist Bryan Alexander as moderator for the opening panel and as the closing keynote speaker. Invited panelists and presenters will look deeply at the foundational relationship of libraries and librarians to media, information, and digital literacy.

More information and registration is available at http://www.library20.com.

What does “digital literacy” mean in an era shaped by the Internet, social media, and staggering quantities of information? How is it that the fulfillment of human hopes for a open knowledge society seem to have resulted in both increased skepticism of, and casualness with, information? What tools and understanding can library professionals bring to a world that seems to be dominated by fake news?

In this Library 2.107 mini-conference, we start with the foundational relationship of libraries and librarians to media, information, and now digital literacy, and then we ask some pointed questions. How should library and information professionals address the issues of fake news, propaganda, and biased research? What technical skills are required for critical thinking in the digital age? As learners increasingly move from just consuming information to also socially producing it, what are the new requisite skills of critical thinking and decision-making? What are appropriate uses for social media when conducting research? What is digital citizenship in a global, globally-diverse, and often globally-fragmented world? What work on digital literacy is available, what frameworks already support these efforts, what are the perspectives of the leading thinkers?

Check out the recording of our session in the YouTube video above. See more sessions from Digital Literacy + Fake News here.